While there are many reasons why a person might not feel like going to the gym, a sadly common one is the fear that some stranger might judge them while they’re trying to get in shape.
And unfortunately, these aren’t unfounded fears because it’s not uncommon for people to get body-shamed, harassed , or even rejected from gyms for entirely superficial reasons.
Although the most extreme cases of this behavior can be widely understood as unacceptable, we can see that some people will try to justify similar actions if they think they see something wrong with somebody’s workout.
Yet not only is one bodybuilder showing that he has no patience for that excuse, but he’s also showing that the people who do this aren’t such big experts when it comes to a proper workout.
On February 21, a bodybuilder who goes by Joey Swoll posted a TikTok in response to a woman who filmed someone else at the gym.
And as we can see from her caption, she seemed to take issue with the way the man in front of her was standing by the weight rack while lifting.
Given his position and how minor his movements seemed to be, she decided that this man was an “ego lifter” who was more interested in seeming strong than actually accomplishing much in the gym.
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But according to Swoll, his technique is a lot more effective than she realized.
He described the man’s motions as “partials,” in which someone uses a third of the range of motion normally seen during a side lateral raise. But while the motions may be smaller, they’re heavy and tend to involve more reps.
As a result, Swoll said they’re a great way to exercise the deltoids and build up one’s size.
And he also mentioned that he’s far from the only one who favors these partials as they’re popular among top bodybuilders.
In particular, he said that one of the exercise’s biggest fans was a famed trainer named John Meadows (pictured), who passed away last year and left a legacy as one of the best in his field.
Swoll also took issue with the idea that the man featured in the original TikTok was an ego lifter, saying, “I also don’t think this man is standing in front of the rack to be mean or disrespectful to you.”
Instead, Swoll figured it was more likely that it was just easier for him to do his partials and re-rack his weights from his position at the rack.
That brought him to his main reason for making his response, which was to call attention to the fact that the woman filming the “ego lifter” was hiding her phone to do so. To him, this indicated that she knew it wasn’t right to record him as she did.
In his words, “You knew you were wrong in what you were doing but you did it anyway. Be better than that. Mind your own business.”
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